After you left the other morning I picked up T at preK, set her up with food and toys and sat down to read your book. I have set my mind to reading (at the cost of housekeeping) as an act of self-care and revolution. Two birds down. And I decided that I liked you so much, that I needed to read the book right away to make sure I was on the right track.

I have not read a book meant for a "Christian" audience in many, many years. At this point in my life I read it the same way I read a book meant for Budhists or Muslims or any other faith system I do not necessarily ascribe to, but I still value. Which, I think maybe we should all do often.

This book-- these essays of yours-- were exactly what I thought they would be: uncomfortable, relatable, beautiful. Living in concert with refugees or sitting with poverty or claiming it as shared struggle, is something of a Great Reckoning this country will surely face. It should not be left for teenage missionaries or 20 something optimists or tenuously connected non-profits to turn the concept of loving our neighbor into a collective reality. Your upbringing was different than mine, but similar in its earnestness and guiding principles. I twitched reflexively when you write about matching t-shirts and Vacation Bible School fliers and I see myself in Chicago or Vancouver or Kansas City. I'm15 years old, intent on my own willingness to make things better, but blind to some of its absurdity. For what it's worth-- I always like the "doing" projects more. Cleaning? Yes. Digging holes or pouring cement or clearing empty lots? Yes. That spoke to the work that no one wanted to do. That spoke to selflessness and kindness. The rest had always been uncomfortable.

When I had signed up to volunteer with the refugees, I immediately noticed the harried and dazed looks of the sweet-souled people who worked for this charity organization. They were in over their heads. As it would turn out, the Somali Bantu were some of the least successfully acclimated refugees the United States had attempted to resettle. When I met them, fresh out of a decade or so of awaiting thrie fates in refugee camps, many of them had never used a light switch or indoor plumbing, or even climbed stairs. I saw the shock of America through their eyes, and it was very sobering indeed. When I went into the non-profit office to sign up to help, it was not yet clear how difficult it would be to force these resilient and stricken families to assimilate in a culture still besotted with manifest destiny....

...It's amazing how much I didn't know, how to this day there is still so much left in the gray. But from the moment I met them, I knew at once that they were not immigrants hewing closely to the origin story we like to tell about ourselves and our country. These were individuals who had been forced by unbelievable trauma to leave everything behind. As Warsan Shire, the Somali poet writes: "no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well." The Somali Bantu refuges I met were polite, they were grateful, they were intent on surviving. But they were not happy to leave their country, fraught as it might have been. I wonder if right from the moment they stepped on the ground, they sensed it: the American dream had no place for them. And yet, here they were.

You detail the ways in which your work changed, the ways that showing up seemed to matter more than any other metric, and your own rationalizing of the Gospel as you understood it to be, toward the Gospel as you wanted to live it. When you were over we were talking about racial equity work and the responsibility of White People to recognize their own Culture. I mentioned how far I had seen people move when they 1. were in relationship with others who they did not share a common past with 2. allowed themselves a pass to get it wrong one or one hundred times and to feel the shame and then move through. You asked if I thought this was possible for Christians.

You said that your publishers mentioned you missed the mark on the general Christian audience but that "nice church ladies" were receptive. I think I know why. First, I think that church ladies were relieved to hear that maybe by cooking and sharing meals and going about their business in their professions or by being involved in their communities, that maybe they can dig deep into living in faith without the burden of proselytizing. Perhaps living their best lives and building relationships within their circles of influence was the way they could Show Up and Show Love. I think women have seen this side of what The Church is capable of for a lot longer than men. They have often missed the mark, but they know it's there. This is not the way of the church though, and so congregants continue to sit in fear, paralyzed by the belief that they are being singularly persecuted, and lay no claim to the role of persecutor. And I think you missed the mark with the rest because they are not ready to claim their stake in this mess. They are not ready to calculate how ignoring social and racial justice is costing them our shared humanity.

When I listened to the impassioned speeches on the National Mall from my couch in Portland, I heard what I wished I heard from the pews I spent years sitting in. Tamika Mallory spoke/preached:

I came here to address those of you who say you are of good conscience, to those of you who experience a feeling of being powerless, disparaged, victimized, antagonized, threatened and abused. To those of you who, for the first time, felt the pain that my people have felt since they were born here with chains shackled on our legs. Today I say to you, welcome to my world. Welcome to our world. I stand here, as a black woman, a descendant of slaves, our ancestors, literally nursed our slave masters. Through the blood and tears of my people we built this country. America cannot be Great without me, you and all of us who are here today. Today you may be feeling aggrieved, but know that this country has been hostile to its people for a long time. For some of you, it is new. For some of us, it is not so new at all.

Point me in the direction of her church.

And here is your gift, I think. You are a translator. You speak in a language that people in churches understand. This is the work of this book for all of us, regardless of our belief systems-- to explain what is lost by not showing up, what we have missed, not giving ourselves a pass, not opening ourselves up to the idea that we may not have a corner on the Whole Truth Market. We need to be reminded to care about the deepest parts of our shared humanity. I don't know how in the WORLD, so many people are standing by and letting a literal monster take a part this corner of the free world. But they are. And folks like you can explain how and why we should care.

I told Paul after you left how I believe that Jesus lived in a constant state of conflict-- he didn't seem to mind. People were always telling him to be respectable. Build capital. Abandon this quest to love the dying people and the sex workers and the homeless. I wonder if churches spent less time wrestling with their internal conflicts, misunderstandings, and finer points of theology, and spent more time digging in to the work of showing up, might they come closer to being what he was all about.

"If the Church the same Zero Fucks that Jesus did about existing within conflict, I'd think about going back". He said we should get that on a t-shirt.

You may want to rethink this friendship.

And then you wrote:

If I were a person of mercy, I would treat each student like a prophet, reverent and grateful. I would not be so hopeless; I would not write this all out. I would hide the beautiful flame that flares up and then hovers, nearly extinguished. It would not feel like the world is an endless river, that all I can do is sit on the shore and touch the bodies as they float on past.

***

My friend and I were discussing the admonishments she was receiving from friends/acquaintances asking her to tone down our rhetoric around the women's march or liberal ideologies on social media. They were from men who she knows through her work as a preacher and a teacher. They are hung up on abortion and a woman's agency (or lack thereof) over her own body. She herself works at a Direct Service organization as a case manager. Her clients are the very people who have run out of places to go to for help. How does that work? Take a seat gentlemen.The paltry safety nets we offer do not even come close to meeting the needs of the mothers and the babies that we so desperately convinced them to have.

Oh, see, I took a quick detour. But I hope you're following. You are allowed in places I don't have any desire to enter. You can see the real crimes we are committing while the church argues in circles with itself. You have the gift of generosity and kindness. You can, like my wonderful friend, argue the apologetics and the technicalities of love. You can translate the cost that we are paying into terms the people will understand. You have already started.

Please check out what it takes to get into this country as a refugee from Syria or Somalia. Think about your children. Your cousins. Your brothers and your sisters. Ask yourself what you would do if there were in a place so ravaged and wrecked, they may not survive. Then ask your government officials to do better. They can and they are choosing not to. We will be on the wrong side of history on this one.

I took A to the barbershop today. We have given up taking all of the kids together. While this system worked for a little while, "worked" would be the operative word. The boys would arrive home, lined up and fresh, with a side of emotional abuse as I had just spent an hour or two threatening and cajoling as they flipped flopped their bodies on top of the leather sofa and plastic chairs and begged me for my phone or the receptionist to change the channel to Cartoon Network.

Other children could flip and flop. I do not care. My children will not. Other children here don't have white moms. Mine do. The sidelong glances are not for my boys. They are for me.

So, we take the kids in pairs or alone now, in part because it's much faster and in part because I realize that the boys do not enjoy the specter of the multi-racial adoptive family dynamic. I think I've established that discomfort has become part my life's work, but I'm certain that none of my children have come to the same conclusions. The people that work there show the boys kindness but focus their conversations on the other adults in the room. I used to wonder why they didn't talk to the kids unless they were correcting them or giving them a lecture on hair care. I soon realized that this was exactly what my kids preferred and any insincere small talk or effusive banter would demonstrate that my kids didn't really belong there. The head nods and the going-about-the-business of the haircut is what my kids are after. This is not to say that fondness or familiarity has not grown over the years. We routinely check in on each others families and side hustles and the general state of the neighborhood. But it is the wordless nods and hop into the chair that I think my boys desire the most. The less I say, the better for them. They do not want to be the center of anyone's attention when they move through Black spaces. They just want to be in them, quietly, belonging.

A crosses the room, jumps in the chair, and asks for a fade but pleads for him to leave it extra long on top. They both look at me for approval

We love our barbers and we've been going there since August was a baby. It has been a neighborhood presence for many years and the building and the business are both owned by a former NBA player and Portland resident. His son pops in after work. People roll through all day saying hello. It sits on a street that was rebranded in the mid-2000s to appeal to the heart of "new" Portland. It is now an "arts district". Galleries, pot shops, food trucks, and expensive coffee places squeeze out the Black barber shops, the corner stores, the taquerias and the social service agencies. The only Black owned club on the long stretch of businesses is threatened by the city and the Liquor Commission with curfews and fines. I realize my barber drives in from across the river to come to work. The people lining up behind us are coming in from the suburbs and East County. I sit by the window and watch groups of people walking by with artisanal ice cream dressed as parodies of themselves. They glance quickly into the glass doors and look away. I wonder if they are surprised. The stores they've been into don't hire people who grew up in this neighborhood.

I secretly hope that they choke just the tiniest bit on their delicious, delicious waffle cones.

Like me, these people are threatening the spaces my children feel most comfortable in-- the places they feel the most belonging. It will continue to happen. Our part of town is one of the most rapidly gentrifying spaces in this country over the last 15 years. I lament what we thought we had, while recognizing we have tacitly helped to bring about its demise.

A hops off the chair. Smiles big. He left it long enough on top.

****

With the arrival of this new age of recklessness around vulnerable peoples, I came back to this story published last year by our local weekly--"It was insistent, a worm eating through my heart: Good intentions aren't enough. I was living out another page in the history of a state that has accepted outsiders reluctantly." I Moved to Edge of Portland... By DL Mayfield

Growing Up White"I don't have a checklist," he says, "but if I did, it would sound something like this: If you don't have any close friends or people who look like your kid before you adopt a kid, then why are you adopting that kid? Your child should not be your first black friend."

If you feel deeply around family and what that means, go ahead and make sure you've seen the Closure Documentary. And then head over to Angela Tucker's page the Adopted Life to listen and watch brave and beautiful adoptees describe life in their own terms.

Lea and Laura send us all the voicemails and emails people leave for the Strangers podcast. Perhaps not all-- we don't get any really angry ones, and my guess is that those exist. I haven't asked.

The messages that people leave usually tell a part of their own story and how ours relates to or resonates with them. I am humbled and moved by all of them, but especially by the ones that talk about the kids and the way that they are interpreting the world. A man who spent his childhood in foster care after his siblings had been adopted and learned how to code switch between lifestyles, talked about listening to the oldest boys and feeling old anxieties creep back in. A woman wrote about growing up as the only biological child of a family that ebbed and flowed in numbers and existed amidst a lot of chaos. And so, hearing Sam's small voice, she could not believe she was his age when she faced so much confusion. The best part of these stories is that no one takes a congratulatory tone about either Paul or I or J because, I think, they know that this situation is fraught. And that none of us know the ending to this story.

We just want it to be okay. Not perfect. Not magical. Just okay.

I know that I keep writing about this. I don't think I can speak it into the record enough.

****

I have been reading the "Mis-Education of the Negro" by Carter Godwin Woodson. I think this should be required reading for every educator, every NGO and Non-Profit or Direct Service Provider, every Sunday School teacher, every preschool teacher... Everyone. It was published in 1933 which put me off, because I am lazy and a snob and I wondered if reading something so old would be at all relevant. I am, of course, foolish and I have spent good chunks of the last few days yelling quotes at Paul and rolling off the couch screaming at its accuracy. He could have written it about my kids' school. It could have been written about the Women's March.

As a matter of fact, however, such Negroes are the real workers in carrying out a program of interracial effort. Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. On the contrary, however, the usual way now is for the Whites to work out their plans behind closed doors, have them approved by a few Negroes serving nominally on a board, and then employ a White or mixed staff to carry out their program. This is not interracial cooperation. It is merely the ancient idea of calling upon the "inferior" to carry out the orders of the "superior....

....This unsound attitude of the "friends" of the Negro is due to the persistence of the mediaeval (sic) idea of controlling underprivileged classes. Behind closed doors these "friends" say that you need to be careful in advancing Negroes... You can never tell when some Negroes will break out and embarrass their "friends". After being advanced to position of influence some of them have been known to run amuck and advocate social equality or demand for the race the privileges of democracy...

Oh, democracy. And the right to assemble. Imagine if 500,000 people of colour had assembled on the Mall? Would the white voice be so complimentary? The right to vote and The Voter Rights Act being challenged in states across this nation. Our very electoral college meant to keep every vote from registering.

He also details the educational systems set up for Black children after the end of the civil war. Slaves had been emancipated "out of a sectional conflict out of which their former owners had emerged as victims". So the freed men could not expect any help or cooperation from their neighbors and had to rely on philanthropic northerners to come in and set up schools. While arguments over what kind of educational systems needed to be set up (vocational or classical) erupted, the generations of teachers to follow (while sincere in their mission) had no idea of the culture of their students or the trauma they had come from. And so, neither educational model served them well, as their teachers from the north were either uncredentialed or inexperienced to train them classically, and their vocational schools were set up with such inferior equipment to those programs in White schools, Black students were trained in methods already obsolete.

If you have any understanding of urban public school districts who serve poor or Black or Brown children, as an employee, parent, community member or student, you will probably be able to draw up half a dozen of your own parallels.

You see why I'm screaming over this.

As I was reading it out loud to Paul, my white brain cringed every time I had to say the word Negro out loud. I changed it to "Black Student" for the benefit of my kids that kept walking through the room. But, let's be really honest, it was mostly to abate my own discomfort saying it over and over again. If you listened to the Eula Biss podcast, you will remember her saying this:

We can’t — I think if you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. And I think — I’ve worked with students who could barely, barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.

And so, I don’t want to be misunderstood as making an argument for offensive language. But I guess the argument that I’m making is that I think that we need a cultural atmosphere where we understand where the crimes are happening, and that many of the crimes are not in the arena of language, but that we need to be able to stumble through imperfect language and imperfect sentences in order to find our way to where the crimes are happening.

So, I'm asking us collectively, to give ourselves the permission to think all of the things. It is vital to entertain multiple perspectives at once and look at the lines you've drawn in the sand, and ask yourself who that line benefits most clearly. If you believe that we are living in a post-racial society and that I am making something out of nothing, do you see the crimes, the oppressed, the forgotten? If you believe that you are a good citizen who places yourself in solidarity with the other, can you show me where the crimes are happening even there? Let these thoughts shake down to your bones and take up residency in your marrow.

****

Black Students Don't Even Get an Equal Education in Diverse Schools-- “If you go to the schools in our district, it looks like utopia. And if you’re a white student, it is utopia.” A parent at a birthday party was commending our decision to send our children to our neighborhood school-- not because it was the right thing to do, but because she's heard "it's a good school". My question to that is always, "good for whom?" This is so prevalent in even the most progressive communities.

Obama's Racial Legacy "If Obama's blackness mussed up white folks' notions of the presidency and their relationship to it, his blackness also complicated the ways black folks critiqued the White House."

One of my dearest, oldest friends sent me a text today: "how has this day been for you?"

The answer is easy and not easy. It is not very much different than any of these dark days. I am resolved to resist better, interrupt more directly, and surface all of the things that make it difficult in small and big ways to be anything other than a CIS gender, able bodied, white person in this country. I'm scared. A little. I was scared before, though, so I guess that is not new to today. I also went to Costco, visited my youngest sons' school, took Truly and her best friend out for their nearly shared birthday, and made dinner for my family. Easy.

****

I spent tonight listening Eula Biss speak about Whiteness. She begins (the unedited version of) the interview by responding to a question about her multi-racial, extended family. She pauses and pushes back because she resists characterizing her family as being unusual or unique as somehow authorizing her to speak about race. It is as if being White in this country might mean you've been de-racialized. "You are nothing" and so unable to speak deeply and consciously about hard things. Plus, her family is not that unusual. So many of our families are made up of families that criss-cross cultures, generations and races. I am in this uncomfortable position often and it resonated deeply: My children are the reason that I listen and learn and write about race. They are. They are not. My relationship to adoption and it's complications are the reason that I listen and learn and write about adoption. It is. It is not. This responsibility falls on me because I'm a citizen of this place... because I'm White. Because, as she says, I carry a debt that I have not paid.

I am seeing a trend in lots of published writing: Whiteness as Expert on Race Relations Because Whiteness Adopted a Black Son or Because Whiteness Has Black Husband or Because Whiteness Chooses Diversity. Whiteness is Doing The Work Because They Have Skin in the Game. We are looking for voices we relate to who can translate this work, and we've authorized them to speak because they come with these shaky credentials. I have a surprise for you, friends. We all have skin in this game. We all have shaky credentials. Some of us have none at all. We all need to dig in. Your proximity to Blackness will certainly strengthen your work, but lack of it does not negate your responsibility to do it.

We care about getting this right and sometimes we don't go in because we know we are not doing a very good job. It is embarrassing. It is not for the risk averse. Worse, we stop learning and critiquing because some of us think we have it sorted out. With the resolve of the last few years, I have lost a few friends (I'm sure) and I've probably lost potential friendships. The latter might be more difficult for me to reconcile because I value my reputation. Folly, to be sure. Better though-- I have regained friendships that I thought were gone and developed deep and abiding connections with people that I had only admired from afar. This work, however bumbling or inadequate, is the gift.

****

White Debt in the NYT By Eula Biss (Wherein she speaks about Little House on The Prairie, Home Ownership, Baldwin and then delivers a gentle Face Ripping Worthy of the Ages)

...I asked myself what the condition of white life might be. I wrote ‘‘complacence’’ on a blank page. Hearing the term ‘‘white supremacist’’ in the wake of that shooting had given me another occasion to wonder whether white supremacists are any more dangerous than regular white people, who tend to enjoy supremacy without believing in it. After staring at ‘‘complacence’’ for quite a long time, I looked it up and discovered that it didn’t mean exactly what I thought it meant. ‘‘A feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements’’ might be an apt description of the dominant white attitude, but that’s more active than what I had in mind. I thought ‘‘complacence’’ meant sitting there in your house, neither smug nor satisfied, just lost in the illusion of ownership. This is an illusion that depends on forgetting the redlining, block busting, racial covenants, contract buying, loan discrimination, housing projects, mass incarceration, predatory lending and deed thefts that have prevented so many black Americans from building wealth the way so many white Americans have, through homeownership. I erased ‘‘complacence’’ and wrote ‘‘complicity.’’ I erased it. ‘‘Debt,’’ I wrote. Then, ‘‘forgotten debt."

On Being Interivew with Eula Biss This is... I mean. If you haven't started, this is a good a place as any. Especially if you are scared of what Anti-Racism work looks like in parenting.

Of course, much of the post-election news cycle was dominated by White folks wringing their hands: How could this happen?Why did it happen? There was lots of weeping and wailing from women who could get the answers to those questions by simply asking their relatives, friends and partners who put Trump in power.

And finally... This episode from StoryCorps about the price that most of us will never be required to pay. I have listened to it twice and each time I am struck by the same questions: What is the very least that I can do? Am I doing the very least? What does it mean to risk more?

We are all wearing a little thin on this,The National Day of Service. The kids have attended school only a handful of days since the beginning of December. They just called another Snow/Ice Day for tomorrow. We do math problems at the dinner table and I assign people for them to study: Assata, Sojourner, Malcom, Huey. I think that this is what we should try to do every weekend. I put Grace Lee Boggs and Yuri Kochiyama on my list. I hope that they will teach me more than I will teach them. They'll pack food bags later and I beg them as a gift to me and this day, to just be kind to each other. Please.

I read about what Mrs. Obama might attempt to do when she becomes a private citizen. "Open a window on her own without permission" is at the top of the list. I am grateful for what she put herself through the last 9 or more years. I realize that she will continue to pay for the privilege of her husband's office for many more years. I aspire to be as strong and committed as she is to her family and to her work. I cannot imagine the responsibility. I also struggle to come up with a plan for dinner. So, it seems like I have a long row to hoe.

I am grumpy and frustrated with the carelessness that the boys carry through the house. They drop things they're finished with at their feet and step over them to go into the next room. They leave cheese on the table, pee in the toilet, and lights on in empty rooms. One says "I hate you" and the other responds quickly with the same. I wonder how those words come out of their mouths so easily. I know that I'm not good enough or kind enough in any of these moments. I am better at my sewing machine or in front the computer or scrubbing the toilet, or really-- anywhere else-- but right in the middle of doing this.

****

I cleaned out our bookshelves and sorted through all of the many, many children's books we own. I pulled out everything. I separated the books into stacks: white protagonists, non-white protagonists, non-human protagonists. Then I pulled and sorted until the stacks looked more equal. They were still lop-sided, but better. Representation matters. (I am reminded that Augie's whale/stingray/turtle phase was really long.)

Next to the Kadir Nelson favourites and our growing Christian Robinson collection, I stack up: Chicken Sunday, Patricia Pollaco; Everybody Cooks Rice, Norah Dooley; Harlem's Little Blackbird, Renee Watson; Spin a Soft Black Song, Nikki Giovanni; Ron's Big Mission, Rose Blue; Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor... There are lots more. There are the board books about loving big hair and Princess Truly (!!) who has happily upset Pinkalicious.They sit next to the books I should have already read as an adult and the Young Adult fiction I'm trying to force my Middle Schoolers into. I see that I need more books from other countries and that there are important perspectives I'm still missing. I hope they come back to these shelves when they are grown and pull out their favourites to take home to their people. That they one day have a home and people is the hope on a day like today. To be honest, that is the hope of every single one of my days.

What books do you love from the places you're from? What books opened your eyes to the places you do not claim?

****

I am often told that the boys are kind and sweet to their friends and classmates. People tell me that they look after each other when they are out in the world and that they are always so polite. They like to be helpful. We go over the rules before we go into Target-- "no running, no hands in your pockets, no picking things up and carrying them around". The little one asks why and one of his brothers explains. There will be school on Wednesday. I will send them off with an affirmation... "I am loved, I am wise, I am kind" and hope that they carry the best of what they have out into the world with them.

This is a partial retelling of five years ago but if that grosses you out, just skip ahead to the stars.

There were some minor complications during my pregnancy with her. I had this strange thing called gestational cholestasis which meant I itched, horribly, from the evening hours until 4 or 5 in the morning. The itch would come through the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet and across my legs. Welts rose up down my arms from the scratching. I had indigestion and restless leg. Persistent sickness (what we found out to be gall stones) put me into the hospital before Christmas with big contractions. This was where they also realized my thyroid was out of wack and making my heart rate soar dangerously high. At home, we were having our basement redone to accommodate a guest room, and days before she came I set about repainting and moving rooms around upstairs to distract myself from the itch and bring on labour. The cholestasis meant I had to somehow get myself ready to have her three weeks early. If I could start labour without chemical intervention or deliver without a C-section, they could take my gall bladder during the same hospital stay.

The night I booked into the hospital, my friend Annie and Stephanie sat with me while they hooked me up to monitors and set about trying to mechanically dilate me further (don't ask. It's terrible). Paul put the boys to bed and then came to sleep on the window seat. I did not sleep. The contractions were painful and steady. I was still itchy. I worried I would not be able to push her out as I had not been able to push out Sam. She was facing the wrong way. I could feel it. It started to snow.

Early the next morning I was far enough along that they could break my water. When she was ready to come, I asked the nurse how I should be pushing-- I did not think I was doing it particularly well. I gripped the mattress and tried to pull it around my body. I tried not to make any noise. Just after noon she came out, facing the wrong way, painful as all hell. I shook uncontrollably. The nurses laughed at how it had all come together so quickly once I figured out what to do.

I would have my gall bladder removed the next day. It was a ridiculous move considering-- and definitely something I would not recommend unless you already have three small children, a basement full of contractors, and a husband who has no paternity leave (in which case, yes, by all means, try surgery less than a day after a baby). I scrubbed myself down while I called Paul to tell him what was happening. I would be back in the room three hours later, just in time to nurse her.

She would be the baby we all needed and wanted, a tiny 6 lb something with dark hair that eventually all fell out. She had no profile to speak of, massive eyes, and moved like a muppet. She hated the car seat and looked like a beet in pink. She would never learn to properly crawl, but would place her left leg out in front of her and use it to pivot her bottom forward. She mastered walking up and down stairs refusing any kind of assistance, terrifying passerbys. I fought my own body to nurse her.

****

She has a fever today and is curled up under covers on the couch flipping her fingers in front of her face. She is making up stories and stating them as gospel truth. Paul is her favourite person. (He is everyone's favourite.) She is desperate to go to school tomorrow and is complaining that in PreK you do not really get homework. She wants to see her best friend (her words) who has a mom that I'm lucky enough to call my good friend.

She is a small, white, girl and I do not know where to start with undoing all the things she will be conditioned to believe. The first five years were easy. I want her to learn how to feel safe without having to teach her how to be afraid. I want her to know what fragility looks like, and then learn how to swallow it hard and move forward. I want her to be the kindest and the wisest in the room but not at the expense of anyone else. I do not think these things will come naturally to her. I do not think these things come naturally to most of us. My friend jokes that a guy won't be able to look at her sideways for fear of being beat down by one of her brothers. I take some comfort in that and remind "her boys" that one of their only jobs is to look after people who are smaller than they are. And who will she look after, amplify, and partner with?

She will come from a multi-racial family. This will not be enough.

I am watching women I know grapple with Intersectionality and Racism. As we are leaning into keeping each other accountable, my friends and I are often hamstrung by our emotional response to being called out by women of colour. I resist it even as I live it. Never am I more grateful or more nauseous when I am called out by Black friends. Our parents and our grandparents may have marched, or sat in, or protested. They thought they had this figured out. And then, as it so happens, they did not dismantle the systems that kept them and their peers holding most of the power. Their personal sacrifice and discomfort was nearly lost on future generations. We were not taught the language of resistance and we were not shown what it meant to take ourselves out of line without losing our dignity or our fight. We were not taught how to hold all of it in a single hand: We are the oppressed, as we are the oppressor. We are victimized and we victimize others. It is excruciating to face and we must still face it.

****

Tru threw up a little while ago. She has accepted she will miss school. She's fallen asleep propped up on the couch clutching a small bowl. Her fever dips. I will sleep out here with her, trying to hug onto my end of the couch as her nearly five year old legs try to shove me off. She is the person that our family needed. She will do better than I have done.

Both the school newsletter and the letter from the principal left out the Martin Luther King Jr. Day closure. These notices pass through multiple hands. It was a simple oversight. Probably. Most likely.

It's been a few days, though. I haven't seen a published correction.

Kids of colour in our building are being pushed out in growing numbers. It will not all be reflected in the data. Suspensions are one thing. Constantly sending a child home until the parents pulls them out or finding them an alternative school to attend is another thing. "No Tolerance Policies" are good for creating a system that disproportionately targets children by race. I speak to educators of colour in our building-- women-- who fear that their intervention will backfire and kids will be retaliated against by people in charge. One of my children feels like a particular adult in the building is constantly watching and correcting him. He wonders if it is because I have sent emails wondering why we are creating unnecessary barriers for student's success. I wonder where their colleagues are, the ones that wear their BLM t-shirts and teach tolerance and multi-culturalism. One of my child's teachers told us in conferences that she knows that he often doesn't understand but that she cannot take the time to answer individual questions because the class is too unruly. I feel bad for her for a moment. And then I sit stunned wondering if she hears herself.

One of my children learns about voter suppression in Ohio. He wears his, "Malcom, Martin, Huey" shirt and can tell you who these men are and why they are important. They participate in Restorative Justice Circles. They have had teachers create their own curriculum to address learning loss and to push kids ahead who need accommodation. One of my kids often refers to "Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry" and two of them have a coach who shares affirmations with them and constantly buoys their spirits.There is good learning happening here. There are good people doing good things. There are good people caught up not knowing when they are doing harm and then doubling down on that harm.

Another teacher wrote a comment on my child's essay remarking that teachers will call into question his character based on his lack of proof reading/poor grammar. The essay was a first draft, typed. It was an unfamiliar format. He earned an F, but was told "he was so close" to meeting the standard. What new, impossibly low standard is this? I wonder how the instruction has been scaffolded to catch all the kids up and push those of whom need it, ahead. In these comments the teacher had no less than 4 typos/grammatical errors. I do not know what to do. I believe that this person cares deeply about the kids that they teach. I believe that they have not been adequately trained and I believe that they are encouraged to center relationship over delivering competent instruction.

I am not an educator. I do not know what I'm talking about. I become the parent that no one wants to see come through the front doors. I become the parent that is followed once I am in the building.

Public shaming of children by adults in charge become tools my kids recognize instantly. A line of kids of colour snakes out of the office waiting for the principal. We are told that we are imagining it. Our children are told that their concerns will be taken into consideration. They see through this immediately.

I wonder where Response to Intervention training happens. I'm curious why we ignore studies on Trauma Informed Care. I wonder why our district has a Racial Equity Education Policy when it is not built into everything we do. I wonder why people are not held accountable to following it without being threatened with a lawsuit. I grieve the kids who think that this is their problem and not solely an adult problem.

This is, I'm hearing, just the tip of the iceberg. This is only one building in a district of many.

I understand why Black families are pulling their kids across the country and, at great personal cost, investing in home schooling. We are failing each other. WE ARE FAILING EACH OTHER. When you are literally taught that you are less a person in the classroom, where do you go? Why would a parent sign their kid up for that?

When Elite Parents Dominate Volunteers, Children Lose. We have begun referring to this as Booster Mom Gate Keeping and it is something I have surely participated in. It was a nice, cold wake up when I realized that my kids' peers and families did not want my charitable volunteerism when it came at the expense of their dignity.

My friend, Chrysanthius Lathan breaks it down, Dear White Teacher I see our admin and our teachers do this every day. Not all of them, surely. But it should not be any of them. I hear she's writing a Part Two. Thank God.

The work of Christopher Emdin is powerful and timely. He's also pretty funny, which is helpful because this crap is not.

This is a short overview of the School to Prison Pipeline that we tacitly condone in this country. The examples in this article are extreme but don't be fooled that this is not happening in your community. Liberal enclaves can look just as bad. In Portland the most clear indicator of achievement is race. Full Stop. Not Poverty. What's up, Minneapolis?!

This fall I approached a friend with the idea of facilitating a small group of parents who were interested in doing Anti Racism Work. The group would be geared to white parents (and so happens, moms, though that was not necessarily the intention) who were interested in digging deeper and supporting each other in understanding our own internal biases, white supremacy in all its flagrant and passive forms, and how we could start to recognize and interrupt patterns of oppression. Some may look at this move as a selfish endeavor-- being the caregiver of Black children, it behooves me to take any and all action to protect them by educating the parents of their peers. Sure. I get that. But at the heart of this work is the deep need to do better by my community, specifically white folks in my community. Maybe we can take this work into our school PTOs, our small businesses, or our HR departments. Most importantly, maybe we can use this work to help our children identify oppression in all its forms and then model how to stand up against it.

I broached the topic and then I backed off. Maybe I was not the right person to see this through.

Thankfully, a friend asked about specifics and offered her home up as a meeting place. Peer Pressure works.

One of the recurring themes in our meetings is when and how we engage our kids in these conversations. When are they old enough? How much information is too much information? How do we balance their innocence with their education? And the truth that we keep surfacing is that we cannot and should not value their innocence over their education. As parents of older children-- particularly white boys-- the lament is that we should've started much sooner. That at 6 or 7 a child can understand and have empathy for a peer who is being singled out for their differences by adults or other children. We should be able to surface and name adult behaviours for them and help them process their emotions. By 8 or 9 they should be able to have language to interpret what they are seeing and know who the trusted adults are in their lives that they can process this with. By 10 and 11 they should have the tools to speak out and stand up when they see bias-in-action. By 12 and 13 they should understand what organizing looks like. They should be able to have candid conversations with their peers and caregivers about internalized racism, patriarchy, and bias. If a child in middle school can run their own student council campaign or participate in a science fair, they should be able to address adults when they see those adults leaving kids behind.

You have undoubtedly heard this all before. You have your own ideas of what your child is capable of. You worry about their high anxiety or that you are teaching them to "other" people by teaching them to notice. You worry that your words will undermine their self-esteem or self-importance. You worry that they will see themselves as less than as you teach them to value others more. You might be attachment parents or believe that you are your child's most important teacher and you do not understand how to teach this..

You do not know how to model this behavior.

You are not wrong.

But consider the price that your children might pay down the road: They will grow up and validate phrases like "black on black crime". They will assume black kids make good basketball players or that poverty is the greatest indicator of intelligence. They will assume that justice is blind and that all those people in prison were given due process. They will have a Black best friend or adopt a Latino child and this will excuse them from examining their own behavior. They will become liberal activists, who center their whiteness before the experiences and education of the people they are trying to help. They will position themselves as experts in every room. They will hire people that look like them or who share their life experience or upbringing. They will comfort themselves by reassuring each other that they have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" paying no attention that many of their peers were not afforded boots.

Here is the price my children and children who look like them might pay: they will continue to have to work twice as hard for half as much. They will make a habit of calling ahead as they approach unfamiliar places, letting folks know that they are coming up the front walk as to not be alarmed by their presence. They will examine the clothes they wear, the way they talk, and then pull apart every interaction looking for clues as to why they were treated differently than the person before them in line. They will drive with their licenses taped to their dash and a picture of their family hanging from their windshield, so that they never have to reach into their pocket during a traffic stop and that the officer is reminded that they too are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons. They will suffer from the stress of constant vigilance around whiteness. They will be strong and resilient. They will be lauded and punished in equal measure for being both.

****

Fear and Fragility are two guiding forces in my life that I am constantly fighting. They leave me twisting in a sea of self loathing (bad day!) or in a land of rationalization (self-care day!). The best moments are when I can clearly see these forces for what they are and firmly move forward anyway. What are you afraid of? Where does it leave you? What price will you pay? I feel deep gratitude for the people in my life who are committing themselves to wrestle with these things while experiencing strong, personal discomfort.

Here are some writings and podcasts that have brought me to the floor or given me (far less emotional) tools to keep going the last few months..

Where Does it Hurt? An Interview with Ruby Sales. Please listen to the unedited version. This spoke to me on deep levels.

And here's Vincent Harding... Again, listen to the unedited episode. He was a flipping Mennonite for the love...! He speaks on Democracy and Faith and the importance of inter-generational relationships. His words on being a "human signpost" were revelatory in my life.

During a difficult week this fall, we were talking about the holidays and Christmas and he said, seriously, "frankly, I have enough good memories stored up. I don't need news ones when it comes to Christmas." He smiled and laughed. (Framily Coping Mechanism: most serious thing are followed by laughing.) There are very few things that he could say that would surprise me, but this was one. We are both fixers by nature but this was one thing he had decided that didn't need fixing right now. We were going to just get through and stop trying to romanticize or idealize anything besides the hard work of getting through.

****

Break started two days early this year thanks to snow and the ice that followed. That made the entire holiday 19 days long. The boys are always very happy to be together during the first few hours or days of any break. Then, like that first college roommate destined to be your soulmate until you realize that one of you may not live to see the end of the semester, things usually turn decidedly darker a few days in. The small food program that I administer in our school depends on the doors being open, and so those two days had me calling and texting parents and teachers and eventually driving through the neighborhood delivering holiday bags to our families. I brought four of the kids with me which was probably a mistake and most certainly sucked most of the joy from the task. It is the one of the best things I do in my life on a purely selfish level-- I feel good and I think it helps in very small and imperfect ways. By that Sunday, I had landed myself in a dental predicament that had me laid out for the week requiring several interventions and many trips to the pharmacy. On Christmas Eve I moved myself off of the couch, vacuumed the living room and cooked a big meal for the eight of us. A teacher from the boys' school unexpectedly and blessedly dropped off a pound cake he had made and the sisters across the street called us to come pick up a cookie plate. This would be the extent of the pre-Christmas baking. I stuck to the mashed potatoes. On Christmas morning we ate cinnamon rolls popped from the can and bacon and the kids opened up their gifts. In the afternoon, the big boys went on a bike ride and the little people headed out with our neighbors to see a movie. I made pots of soup and bread and our friends came over for the evening.

The grief of the holiday-away-from-family for the boys was not as acute as I had expected. There was relative peace.

I realize that we had lowered our expectations to barely registering and then gone still lower. We had not gotten a tree. Somehow not having another human sized thing that required care and shed it's stuff everywhere seemed like the right move. I briefly thought we would miss it, but only visitors noticed. We put lights up and some decorations. Snow days had canceled what few holiday commitments we had, and my exploding teeth had canceled what little else we had planned. There were gifts-- but mostly things that the kids needed. This was not the Christmas Magic I anticipated giving my children. This was not magical at all. This was just fine.

****

I do not know what this year will bring. I'm worried. We sorted out what our family was going to look like for us in 2016. That could change abruptly (or not) this year. The hard work of just "getting through" may undo more relationships. The hard work of resisting in the face of racist systems and policies and people may undo even more. "Happy New Year" doesn't seem so fitting at the moment, but it's what we have and so I'm passing it on to you with all the hope and kindness I can muster. I'm wishing you all Relative Peace and the Fierce Resistance, Friends. Happy New Year.

The big boys headed home in July. I was not sure they believed that I would get them there, but I did. We flew the red eye in Ft Lauderdale and arrived in Little Haiti through rush hour traffic. J told me to lay down on the couch and take a nap.

Nope. The mango tree outside dwarfed the house in ripe fruit. The rats eat well.

We drove to see the boys' relatives on the north side of town. We drove down to the water to eat dinner. They did not look back when I drove away the next day. They were home and I was not and all was well.

The kids were deep into track. Manny has (unsurprisingly) a terrific arm and takes direction from everyone other than me, really, really well. We queued up shot put on YouTube and the big boys watched the Olympic relay trials. Sam practiced with blocks in the park in the mornings and on the track at night. I walked the track in defiance of my own waistline. The boys finished summer school. Manny was tall enough to go to the pool unaccompanied by anyone other than his brothers and took agency of his own pool pass. We lived an idyllic urban existence of home canning, long jump practice, evening swims, and parties in the park. Of course, the emotional toll of brothers coming and going did not go unnoticed and I braced myself for the empty spaces.

We drove to Sacramento to watch Manny and Sam compete in the Junior Olympics. The nerves and heat made for a particularly combustible combination. Once home, Truly would panic and start crying every time she got a little overheated walking on the sidewalk. The 110 degree heat had made an impression.

Paul works from home now and this was his first summer to do so-- his giant screen and humming electronics heated up his tiny corner. We dragged window units from the basement and installed them strategically around the house. The sisters had not opted for such luxury. The GCFI circuits tripped when they kicked on in the evenings. I peeled off flakes of straw bale and jammed in compost between the layers, trying to get my anemic beds to break down and produce fruit. It worked. We grew tomatoes and beans and one perfect cantaloupe, 6 jalapeno peppers, and two bell peppers. I put in three blueberry bushes and marked out a future patio.